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Recognition, Identity and Subjectivity

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The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory

Part of the book series: Political Philosophy and Public Purpose ((POPHPUPU))

Abstract

The term “recognition” has in the last two or three decades become the centre point of an extraordinary amount of theoretical activity among critical theorists and social and political philosophers. It is also at the centre of a great deal of conceptual ambivalence and often theoretical confusion as not all authors mean the same thing with the term and as there is often inadequate attention to the different concepts at stake. In this chapter, the author maps central parts of the conceptual and theoretical landscape around the term “recognition”, which is relevant for critical theory, and discuss some of the main contemporary authors on the theme: Axel Honneth, Charles Taylor, Nancy Fraser and Judith Butler.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Williams (1992, 1997) and Ikäheimo (2007, 2014).

  2. 2.

    See Hegel’s famous story of “the master and slave” in Hegel (1979: 111–119); and Hegel (2007: 152–164). For an interpretation, see Ikäheimo (2014).

  3. 3.

    When someone I love is happy, this makes me happy too, but this does not mean that my happiness is my reason to love her.

  4. 4.

    There can be informal normative expectations or norms for example that parents ought to love their children, but this does not mean that they should to love their children because of these normative expectations or norms. On the contrary: if a parent would say that he loves his children because there is a norm that one ought to, he would likely, and justifiably, be scolded for not really loving his children.

  5. 5.

    This is to say that gratitude is the appropriate response to love. On gratitude as a form of recognition, see Ricoeur (2005, 232–263).

  6. 6.

    On the “first”, “second” and “third generation” of the Frankfurt School, see Anderson (1995).

  7. 7.

    Honneth’s theory has since The Struggle for Recognition gone through various phases of experimentation and development, most importantly in his debate with Nancy Fraser (Fraser and Honneth 2003), where he starts conceiving of forms of recognition in a more historicist vein, as bound up with historically and culturally varying norms of recognition or “recognition orders”; in Reification (Honneth 2008), where Honneth introduces “below” the three forms or spheres of recognition a more foundational form of recognition; and in Freedom’s Right (Honneth 2014), where the concept of recognition is replaced by the concept of “social freedom” as the critical master concept. See Zurn (2015).

  8. 8.

    See also Taylor (1989).

  9. 9.

    See Taylor (1995: 71, note 41).

  10. 10.

    See however Zurn’s criticism of Honneth in this regard in Zurn (2000: 121).

  11. 11.

    Fraser and Honneth engaged in an extensive critical debate on the strengths and weaknesses of their respective theories in Fraser and Honneth (2003). On Honneth’s, Taylor’s and Fraser’s accounts of recognition, see also Thompson (2006). On Fraser, see Olson (2008).

  12. 12.

    Both examples, with minor modification from Honneth (2007): 325.

  13. 13.

    Butler follows Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel according to which all human desire is “desire for recognition” (Butler 1987: 76, 2004: 2, 31, 236). For a critique of this Kojèvean line of interpretation, see Williams (1992: 366–412).

  14. 14.

    For example, whereas in The Psychic Life of Power (Butler 1997) Butler thinks of this partly in terms of Nietzschean and Foucauldian ideas of guilt so that “recognition” can only result from or be earned through an acceptance of guilt and thus internalization of the “law” according to which one is guilty, in Giving an Account of Oneself (Butler 2005: 15) Butler distances herself from this “punitive scene”.

  15. 15.

    Butler 1997, pp. 6–8.

  16. 16.

    How does this relate to the distinction made above between horizontal “recognition mediated by norms” on the one hand, and “purely intersubjective” recognition? Though purely intersubjective recognition such as love in the exact sense discussed above is not recognition of someone as a bearer of a right to love prescribed by a norm and thus not mediated by norms in this way, there may be other ways in which it is mediated by norms affecting the “loveability” of individuals or influencing people’s perceptions of and reaction patterns towards each other and thus the likelihood that they will develop attitudes of love towards each other. Note that Butler’s own use of the term “love” is broader than the one used in this article (see Butler 2004: 57–74).

  17. 17.

    Since vertical upwards recognition of norms implies or is more or less the same thing as recognizing or “respecting” others as bearers of the rights, duties and other deontic powers that the norms prescribe, the basic structure of norm-governed life thus includes: (a) vertical upwards recognition of norms (whether institutionalized or informal), (b) horizontal recognition mediated by norms between individuals and (c) horizontal purely intersubjective recognition between individuals as authorities of the norms.

  18. 18.

    For more on recognition and critical theory, see Schmidt am Busch (2011). On recognition and social ontology, see Ikäheimo and Laitinen (2011).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. UNSW Australia, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Heikki Ikäheimo

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  1. Heikki Ikäheimo
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Political Science, William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey, USA

    Michael J. Thompson

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Ikäheimo, H. (2017). Recognition, Identity and Subjectivity. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_26

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